Brilliant Reader Questions!
Trading award-winners, pitcher limits, plus the latest WWLF news.
Five days away from WHY WE LOVE FOOTBALL kickoff, had some fun with the wonderful Kay Adams on her delightfully named “Up And Adams” show, doing a bunch more interviews this week, getting some new, thinner clothes for the tour (I’m planning on going with a jacket-and-tie theme for this one)… it’s all happening.
Let’s do a little more WHY WE LOVE FOOTBALL promotion, and then answer some reader questions!
Tour Spotlight: Rainy Day Books, Sept. 20
Obviously, my Kansas City tour stop is always huge, because Kansas City will always be home. This year’s stop is particularly special, for two reasons… or even three reasons.
The first two reasons are that I will be in conversation with two great friends, Washington Post Deputy Opinion Editor and author David Von Drehle, and the Chiefs’ longtime broadcaster Mitch Holthus. Margo reminded me that for a little while, I used to do a Chiefs show with Mitch… well, that’s not exactly right; I used to do a segment for Mitch’s Chiefs show. Maybe Mitch remembers better.
The third reason this one is special is because, obviously, the Chiefs are special, and, more to the point, Patrick Mahomes is special… and none of that seemed possible during my 15 years in Kansas City. The Chiefs were mostly good, I’d say, when I was columnist at The Kansas City Star, and I got to see a bunch of legendary players. I covered Hall of Famers Derrick Thomas, Marcus Allen, Will Shields, Willie Roaf and, particularly, Tony Gonzalez, while I was there, and I also wrote a lot about near-Hall of Famers like Priest Holmes, who I played chess with weekly, and Andre Rison, who through the years gave me various exclusive glares.*
*This is an homage to the New York Post, which once wrote: “Albert Belle glared exclusively at the Post.”
But the Chiefs’ quarterback situation was always, well, not a Cleveland Browns kind of mess, but an odd parade of backups and projects. When I first came to town, former 49ers backup Steve Bono was the quarterback—he once said that the worst restaurant in San Francisco was better than he best restaurant in Kansas City, which, in addition to being ridiculous (they’re both great food towns), really endeared him to his new fanbase.
Bono was followed by former 49ers backup Elvis Grbac, who once, after a loss, said, “I can’t throw the ball and catch it too.” This really endeared him to his teammates.
Former backup Rich Gannon then battled with Grbac for the top spot—there are Chiefs fans to this day who believe that choosing Grbac over Gannon cost the team a Super Bowl shot—and Gannon was followed by former Washington backup Trent Green, who was really good for a few years. Then came one of the Huards, I guess it was Damon, followed by Tyler Thigpen (who had been drafted and cut by the Vikings), followed by former Patriots backup Matt Cassell, and it just felt like this merry-go-round of meh. I probably asked 400 or 500 times, “When will the Chiefs draft their own franchise quarterback?”
Now, they have the best quarterback in the NFL—maybe the best to ever have done it. From the book:
“Here’s the question I undoubtedly will get asked most when this book comes out: ‘What were the hardest moments to leave out?’… The hardest moment to leave out were the 1,943,477 Patrick Mahomes moments that didn’t fit in the book.”
By the time I’m in Kansas City, I imagine it will be 1,943,481 moments.
We’re going to have a blast. Come out to Unity Temple on the Plaza next Friday night! Tickets are $33 and include a signed copy of the book. Plus, I’ll be personalizing books after the show if you want to stick around.
We’re offering something special to JoeBlogs readers—preorder WHY WE LOVE FOOTBALL by Sept. 16, and you’ll get three months of Joe Blogs free. If you’re a current subscriber, I’ll add three free months to your subscription. And if you’re not, well, this won’t be just any three months; we’re talking about all the postseason baseball in October, baseball awards season, lots of NFL, some Hall of Fame stuff… it will be a lot of fun. All you have to do is preorder the book and then fill out this form.
You can preorder from a whole bunch of places, including:
All right, let’s get to some questions!
Brilliant Reader Matt asks about an exchange between Mets announcers Gary Cohen and Keith Hernandez about Luis Arráez, who now seems assured of becoming the first man to win batting titles for three different teams.
Hernandez: “Well, you don’t normally trade batting champions.”
Matt asks: “How often do repeat winners of major awards get bounced around?”
The thing that’s craziest about Arráez is not that he’s going to win three batting titles with three different teams, but that he’s going to do it in three consecutive years:
2022: Hit .316, won batting title with Twins
2023: Hit .354, won batting title with Marlins
2024: Hitting .318 (total) and will win batting title with Padres
Specific to Arráez… he’s just a very strange player, particularly in today’s era. You can talk all day about the things he DOESN’T do. He doesn’t strike out, he doesn’t walk, he doesn’t hit for power—153 of his 184 hits this year are singles—he doesn’t steal bases, and by Outs Above Average (minus-13!) he doesn’t play anything close to even average defense (the Padres have been splitting him between first base and DH).
Teams simply don’t seem to know what to do with his unique talents.
But it should be said that he was a key for a 2023 Marlins team that shocked everybody by making the playoffs, and he undoubtedly has been a key for the Padres’ turnaround this year.
Technically, three players over the last 75 years have won batting titles for multiple teams. But, really, it’s only two: